Kiss Her Goodbye (28 page)

"So he mugged her?"

I nodded. "But Ginnie wasn't as dumb as Fidello thought—the pebble wasn't in her purse, it was tucked in the sleeve of her blouse."

"Then who killed Fidello?"

"Whoever sent Ginnie to make that delivery. That's who went to Ginnie's apartment looking for the stone, and that's who went to Fidello's apartment to look for it there."

She was nodding slowly, following right along. "
And
to tie him off as a loose end, when the stone wasn't found in his flop ... or when Fidello claimed he never had it."

"Right. The problem with this case, doll, is that I have been viewing a whole scattering of puzzle pieces and trying to make one picture out of them. This is not one puzzle. It's two or three or even four puzzles, and each one is simple."

"Unless its pieces are mixed in with all those others."

"Bingo, baby."

"So what now?"

"Now I think I'd like to get cleaned up."

"I think I'd like to see you cleaned up."

I gave her a funny look. "I don't know, though—I can't quite buy you as a blonde."

She pretended to take offense. "Really? I was a blonde when we met."

"Yeah, you were an undercover policewoman and I damn near ruined everything trying to save your pretty behind."

"I didn't mind. That guy needed killing anyway."

Memories.

"So," she shrugged, "maybe blondes don't have more fun."

And she grabbed at the scalp of the ash blonde hair and yanked it off. She tossed the wig with the rest of the odds and ends scattered around the office floor, and unpinned all that black, auburn-highlighted hair and shook it and shook it and shook it some more ... then smoothed it some.

Then there she was—Velda.

With that timeless pageboy and those beautiful brown eyes and a mouth that fed your hunger even as it encouraged you to sup some more.

"Baby...," I said, and was reaching for her.

"First you get cleaned up," she said. She shook a finger at me. "And maybe buy a girl a meal. You don't think I'm easy, do you?"

She had left a suitcase out on the landing, and we collected that and caught a cab to the Commodore. When I took her up to my room, and she saw that it was the Honeymoon Suite, she started laughing, but managed to blurt, "You gotta be kidding me!"

"Hey, you know I'm a sensual slob."

She gave me a narrow-eyed look, hands on her raincoated hips. "Have you been having fun while I was away?"

I ignored that and pointed. "There's a hot tub in there. Big enough for two. You had a long plane trip. Maybe we could ... wash away each other's sins?"

She came over and wrapped her arms around me and gave me a short but sweet kiss. "I don't think they have enough soap for that. But it's not a bad idea."

That was when the goddamn phone rang.

Velda said, "A buck says it's Pat."

"No bet."

It was Pat.

"Mike, where were you this afternoon?"

"At Cummings's office going through more files. Why?"

"Have you heard about the raid on the Y and S social club?"

"Yeah. Who'd have thought in this day and age those guineas would go back to the mattresses."

"Mike ... we found a lot of .45 shells there."

"No kidding."

"No kidding. I put a rush through ballistics on them. Some came from an old grease gun, World War II era. Strictly illegal weapon. The others came from a Colt .45."

"Do tell."

"I thought sure it would match up with yours on file. But it didn't."

"I could have told you that."

"Somehow I think you could. It did match up to another weapon on file. The .45 used at the Y and S Club belonged to Bill Doolan. Somebody in that shoot-out was using Bill Doolan's piece, Mike. Who do you think that could have been?"

"Probably not Doolan."

His sigh was inevitable. "If the forensics guys didn't say that massacre likely involved an invading force of around ten, I would haul your ass to Centre Street."

"If elephants had wings, hats would get popular again. Where are you calling from? Are you outside?"

"Yeah, this is a public phone. I'm around the corner from Club 52. You might want to get over here and have a look. I think you'll be interested."

"Why?"

"Somebody just killed Tony Tret."

We had to postpone the hot tub, but I did take a quick shower and Velda laid out clean clothes for me. I switched back to my own .45 for the shoulder sling, and told Velda to go downstairs after I left and put Doolan's gun—which I'd borrowed from his private stash in the old desk at his apartment—in a manila envelope and have it stowed in the hotel safe.

"I'm not going with you?" she asked.

"No. I want a better sense of who's doing the shooting before I risk putting you back on the firing line."

"If you say so. But I am a big girl."

"And in all the right places. Do keep that little .32 of yours handy. People have been dropping in on me at this hotel with more in mind than leaving a mint on my pillow."

"Got it."

So I was in the trench coat and my dry-cleaned suit with my hat only mildly spattered with remnants of my afternoon at the Y and S. I would get a new porkpie soon enough. Right now I had a cab to catch.

The rain was gone but its memory endured in the slick black patent-leather look of the sidewalks and streets. I grabbed a cab and fifteen minutes later got dropped at where yellow police sawhorses cut off Club 52's block. The only crowd in front of the art deco marquee tonight was police-oriented—an ambulance, four black-and-whites, Pat's unmarked Ford—and the only people playing dress-up were uniformed cops and E.M.T.s.

They were loading the long, lumpy rubber bag into the ambulance when I strolled up to where Pat was watching the procedure. "Do I need a look at him?"

Pat shook his head. "Not much to see." He pointed across the way at an office building. "It was a rifle shot from the fourth window over, on the tenth floor."

"He got shot right here, out on the street, in front of the club?"

The Homicide captain nodded. "While he was picking out tonight's lucky customers from the crowd." His eyes went to the office building again. "We've already been up there. Empty office space."

"Night watchmen?"

"Six empty floors get a cursory inspection, twice a night. Whoever did this had a little eagle's nest setup. Regular Oswald routine. We found nothing but the three spent shells."

"Three?"

"Yeah, took the shooter three tries. The third one went in small and came out big, splattered a security guy pretty good." Pat sighed. "They were lucky it was a rainy night, and the crowd unusually small. Otherwise, those other two shots might have taken out a clubber or two."

"Have you released the crowd?"

"Yeah. We took names. I didn't see any need for holding them here. They saw nothing."

"What about the security guys?"

"They're still inside."

"Mind if I step in there?"

"What for?"

"Maybe I want to pick up a souvenir swizzle stick."

He grabbed my arm—not hard, not exactly friendly. "Mike—what's going on? I'm trying to tell myself you had nothing to do with that slaughter this afternoon. But even without that, the body count is getting out of hand. What kind of war
is
this?"

"I'm not sure yet."

"Mike...."

"Pat, you'll be the first to know."

"Will I?"

"Okay—the second." I grinned at him.

He couldn't help it—he grinned back. Where would he be without me to do his dirty work?

The lights were up inside Club 52 and its magical world was revealed as the old theater it had once been, all its renovations designed only to work in the near dark. The club was a blowsy woman wearing a lot of flashy makeup, hoping to get picked up before last call and the lights coming on.

Chrome was on stage.

Not performing, sitting backward on a white caneback chair, like Marlene Dietrich in
The Blue Angel.
She was in an electric blue version of that midriff-baring outfit she'd done her disco thing in the other night—the blue against her naturally tan skin made a stark contrast. Nobody was up there with her. The drum kit on its riser, the synthesizer, a guitar on a stand, a few amps. But her Colombian "musicians" were M.I.A.

I walked across the plexiglass dance floor where a pair of bare-chested bartenders were sweeping up, a strangely pitiful sight. Normally the stairs at the far side of the stage were blocked by security staff, but not now. I was able to go right up there.

"Hi, honey," I said, depositing myself before her.

She looked up. Her makeup had run, and the big brown almond-shaped eyes had the same raccoon look as that little, mostly naked kid in the cellar at the Y and S. The platinum mane was in disarray. "Mike. Oh, Mike, what a terrible night is this."

Stress had not robbed the Latin lilt of its musicality.

"Any idea who might want to kill Little Tony?"

Her chin quivered. "He like to be called Anthony."

"I know. No offense to the dead. You're taking it hard, kid. Wasn't he just a guy you worked for?"

"I love him, Mike. He love me."

"I thought you weren't anybody's girl."

She swallowed. Tears were streaming. She was a wreck. "If he here, if he were alive ... I would be his. Only his."

"Sorry. Look, Chrome—Anthony's murder is the latest sour note in a pretty sorry symphony. That nice man Doolan got killed, and so did a little hooker named Dulcie Thorpe."

"Doolan, he kill himself, the papers say."

"They say wrong. And there was a girl you knew who was mugged and murdered."

She nodded, swallowed, trying to be brave. Her face was a shambles within the unruly platinum frame, but the long legs on either side of the chair were as smoothly appealing as ever.

"Ginnie," she said. "My young friend, Ginnie Mathes. We were in dance class together. She was good. I wanted her to join my new act."

"Didn't know you used backup dancers."

"The new act, it will. Both boys and girls. It would have mean the whole new life for Ginnie. It is sad. Very sad."

"Did you know Joseph Fidello?"

Her scowl was underscored by those smeary, runny cosmetics. "Ginnie's ex? He was a bad person. He knew her a long time ago and he ... what is the word? Try to worm his way back in her life. I told her, he is the bad ... what is the word? Influence. I do not think she was seeing him anymore, when she ... when we lose her."

"Okay. Look, I'm sorry to bug you right now. I can tell this is rough for you."

"You come see me, Mike. You come see Chrome later. I will have myself put together." She smiled bravely. "You will like what you see. I promise."

Her smile was a quavering thing, and I nodded and smiled, and left her alone.

Alone in the middle of the stage of the hottest club in Manhattan, which tonight—and perhaps on any future night—was as dead as Little Tony Tret.

T
HE CLOUDS OVER
the city were as gray as industrial smoke, and you could smell the rain up there. But whether the stuff would get dumped on us again was hard to say. The gentle mist barely registered, a little thunder grumbled, and I had a feeling the worst was over.

Or soon would be.

A pity, in a way—when a heavy rain came, city sounds were overwhelmed by nature, traffic thinning, pedestrians driven indoors and leaving the sidewalks to those who liked walking in the rain. Velda and I had gone out in it often enough, grinning into the wind and spray like sailors riding the bow through choppy stuff, and if it caught up with us today, we wouldn't mind at all.

Still, we were prepared—I was in the trench coat and she in her raincoat when we stepped from the cab in front of the East Side address of the turn-of-the-century former residence that housed the Enfilade gun club. It was pushing noon. I had skipped the Bing's workout and didn't swim either, because I got my exercise yesterday at the Y and S Club.

And in the Honeymoon Suite. Our reunion had been a loving, gentle affair, as I was recovering from that pummeling my midsection had taken under the bulletproof vest. Bruises blossomed overnight like exotic purple and black flowers. At breakfast—where we sat and talked and worked at putting the remaining puzzle pieces together—Velda had fed me more aspirin.

There had been no effort by her to get me back on the prescribed meds. Just the opposite. She had looked at the vials, reading over their contents, and her dark eyes flashed at me as I stood nearby shaving.

She said, "Do you
know
what you've been
taking?
" I said no, and she just shook her head...
and
shook the contents from the bottles into the toilet and flushed them all away.

Gerald, the dignified grayed guardian of the Enfilade gates, was at his nicely carved antique desk as usual. Velda smiled a little at the formality of his manner and his funeral director garb. He rose and bowed to her, which was pretty goddamn cute, I have to admit, then we stood before him like employees reporting to a benevolent boss.

"Mr. Hammer," Gerald said. "You are welcome to bring your lovely guest along this morning. But you must both sign in..."

He pushed the book toward me when I held up a hand. "We're just here with a couple of questions, Gerald."

"Oh? Detective business?"

"Gathering background."

"Nothing regarding our members, I hope."

"Well, frankly I'm investigating Inspector Doolan's death. It may not have been a suicide."

Gerald frowned thoughtfully. "He did seem an unlikely candidate for such, so vital an individual. How may I be of service?"

"I've never been an Enfilade regular, Gerry, so I'm not sure about certain procedures. Do members store their weapons here? I find it difficult to believe they hop out of a cab, or walk over from their parked cars, lugging firearms."

His smile was gentle, as if he were dealing with a child. "Some, like yourself, Mr. Hammer, have permits to carry." He nodded toward my left shoulder, indicating he could again tell I was packing. "Of course, there
are
firearms in use at the Enfilade, some of them vintage weapons, which would be difficult to transport in that fashion."